Letters

Advisory services offer women choice

As one of the founders of what is now the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, I feel it needs to be emphasised that the charity's role back in the 1960s when it was formed was to offer impartial counselling to women seeking to terminate a pregnancy to enable each woman to make an informed choice as to what was best for her in her particular situation at that particular time in her life. Nothing has changed (Abortion charities may lose counselling role, 29 June).

The provision of non-profit-making abortion operations by BPAS came considerably later: this was to prevent the exploitation of women by the commercial clinics that were then rife. Making legal and safe abortion harder and slower to obtain could well take us back to those bad old days when those with money could bypass the system.

Unlike members of anti-abortion, anti-contraception organisations (one of which has already been enrolled by the government to sit on a sexual health forum – a bit like asking a turkey to sit on a committee deciding the best way to celebrate Christmas), BPAS counsellors are genuinely pro-choice. I know, from my own 30 years' experience of talking to many thousands of women on this subject, that often it is only after a woman has disposed of the hassle of finding out whether she can access an abortion that she can turn her attention to considering whether this is what she really wants.

Around 15% of women approaching BPAS about an unwanted pregnancy decide, after speaking to a counsellor, that they do not want an abortion, It would be interesting to know how many of the woman who approach anti-abortion organisations for pregnancy testing and/or counselling are referred on to legal abortion providers.

Younger women today have grown up accepting that legal abortion is available and have no idea of the misery and suffering caused when it is unavailable or restricted. I hope these proposals will be a wake-up call to them to write to ministers and MPs before it is too late.